


Red Oleander

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguity, Asphyxiation, Dark Ginny Weasley, F/M, Kinda, Masturbation, Power Dynamics, Sexuality, Unhealthy Relationships, a little dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21750895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: She must be sick to want him the way she does.
Relationships: Tom Riddle/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46





	Red Oleander

**Author's Note:**

> I don't tend to write Ginny too often, so any criticism is welcome.

Ginny lay in her bed watching the ceiling. She could hear the other girls breathing softly as they slept, untroubled by the darkness of the room, or the closeness of the walls. They all slept well because they couldn’t feel _him_ infecting the air.

She’d never forgotten about him, even if she said she had.

Because he was simply unforgettable.

But that wasn’t to say he’d been near the surface all these years because he hadn’t. Rather, he’d lurked below, hidden in the darkest corners and the deepest depths of her brain, like tangled weeds in a pool, just waiting to catch a hapless swimmer’s legs and drag them to their death.

Except now he was crawling out again.

Ginny shook her head against the pillow and shoved the duvet further down her legs. It was too hot in here, despite the weather. The temperature was never right for her here, it probably didn’t help that her bed was closest to the fireplace; usually, she liked the dull glow of the embers that lighted the room for long past midnight. But now the heat was stifling, making her back sticky and her pyjamas glue to her skin.

He wasn’t hot.

He was always too cold. 

If she really thought about it, she could remember the chill of his fingers in her hair; an innocent gesture then, less innocent now. Though she could hardly stop thinking about it anymore. It was a strange type of self-inflicted cruelty, to imagine the solidity of his fingers in her hair, and on her jaw, holding her chin between his fingers.

They’d be the same age now.

And though she hadn’t seen him in years, she could still picture every minute detail of his face. If she had any talent for drawing, she would have drawn him everywhere; like a girl in love. 

Except she wasn’t in love.

She was in whatever twisted sibling it kept it the shadows. That expanse of grey that blurred the edges between hatred and fascination, and love and obsession. Although they had never shared a conversation, they _had_ shared a consciousness; a sick symbiotic relationship.

Where she gave and he took. 

Ginny closed her eyes. Behind her lids, she could see the statues in the corridor. Earlier, when she’d been walking alone, the light had caught on the jaw of one of them, and she’d seen his face for the first time in years. And even when she blinked and checked, she could still see his smile inlaid into the stone.

But he was infused everywhere in this place. He lurked between the bricks and their mortar, and in each and every nook, and even underfoot. Some days, she swore she’d felt someone’s fingers curling themselves around her ankle ready to pull her straight through the floor. 

No one else felt it.

The feeling of being watched. 

Of being stalked by her own shadow until she was apprehensions to stand in the sun, in case she saw his smile again or felt his hands in places they shouldn’t be. Sometimes, it was just a weight on her back like someone was standing behind her and touching her spine, other times, it was a press of a hand into her thigh, or the chill of fingers stroking her neck.

Ginny shifted onto her back; her eyes still heavy. She wasn’t quite asleep but nor was she awake, she was just drifting in this darkness; drowning in the black spaces and the red of the curtains and the bedclothes. The colours seemed to merge together, mixing and combining like two shadows copulating in the dark, but what they engendered was somehow grotesque. This violent, voracious colour that wrapped itself around her legs and curled along her wrists; if Ginny raised her left hand to just above her face, she could see how the colour wound itself around her fingers like threads of her mother’s knitting wool.

She swallowed. 

Beneath her ribs, her heart began to shudder; beating louder than before, throbbing almost until she could picture the blood as it pulsed around her body, filling up the blood vessels and the organs, sating them with her blood. Ginny kept her eyes closed and waited.

And waited. 

The mattress dipped beside her and the duvet crinkled. Without opening her eyes, Ginny could picture him sitting there; his head tilted to the side and his eyes the colour of the merlot wine she was only allowed to sip. One of his hands would be resting on the bed, the other so close to her skin, but not touching.

He didn’t take. 

He waited for her to give.

Still with her eyes closed, Ginny pulled at the waistband of her shorts; it was sticky, and the material was like sandpaper against her skin. But she dragged them down to her feet and then kicked them off to the left. And all the while her heart continued to hammer against her chest, each time threatening to splinter her into a hundred piece, but never quite doing it. 

After all, this wasn’t the first time she’d reached between her thighs when she couldn’t sleep. Though it was the first time that she could feel _him_ sitting beside her; watching her as an unaffected observer would watch a raging fire consume a building. Admiring the way that each flame was a different shade, and how each one licked along the length of the walls and seemed to suck at the nodes where splintered wood met singed wallpaper. 

But beneath her fingers there was no fire; instead, it was dense and wet, and not unlike a jungle, and a small part of her was scared she’d lose her fingers somewhere inside. She swallowed again, her hand hesitating, hanging really, suspended in the black.

Someone else turned over and sniffed; their bedcovers rustling.

Ginny retracted her hand back to her stomach like an abseiler stepping away from the edge. It was all so wrong; doing this, with _him_ was wrong. She was wrong. There was something inside her that must have been twisted, deformed, probably. There must just be something so sick inside her, for her to _want_ him like she did.

But before she moved her hand any further, his was on top it. His fingers interlocking with hers and pushing her hand down into her skin. Together they moved as one distorted hand; monstrous and misshapen. It twisted and faltered as it slid down between her hipbones and back to that dark space between her thighs.

She paused.

Before pressing her fingers down into her skin.

As she did so, he slid his hand away and instead, kissed softly at the corner of her mouth, murmuring things she couldn’t hear because all the blood inside her was rushing past her ears. Though she could still feel his mouth, and it felt like a woman’s, like Pansy’s might if Ginny ever got to kiss her, and his hands were so soft in her hair. The nails tracing over her scalp, pulling the strands back behind her ears and stroking further; sliding over her neck and resting on the pulse. 

But then he shifted and his weight above her was a man’s weight. The pressure of his hands and the chill of his skin practically leaving prints behind in her skin like he was touching freshly fallen snow, and when he dipped down, his tongue against her ear, she could smell his skin.

Ginny bit into her lip.

He was pushing down on her now. Forcing her head back onto the pillow and her spine to be swallowed by the mattress. His hands were so cold against her neck; the fingers moulding themselves to the shapes and the contours of her throat. They fitted together like they were made for each other.

Maybe they were. 

They weren’t like other people. Other people needed words, but he always knew what she was thinking, what she wanted but was too afraid of not fulfilling expectations to ask for. But he knew. _He_ always gave her what she wanted, whether she knew it or not. Even now, he was the voice that guided her fingers; told her to press deeper inside herself, and to move her hips when he told her, and to touch herself with less pressure. Then more. 

_Harder._

_Softer._

_Slower._

_Faster._

She could taste his every command in the back of her throat, and every one of them was another link in the chain that wrapped around her stomach like some metallic snake. His every breath against her throat pulled that cable tighter.

And a small part of her wanted to press harder than she should. Use her nails to rub and scrape and scratch; grate at her skin until there was blood on her fingers until there was blood coating her hands, and dripping down her thighs. 

Until she was rid of him. 

But she couldn’t.

She wouldn’t. 

Not when such a big part of her wanted to keep him for herself; this special little secret that she never had to share with anyone. _Her_ special secret leaving the indents of his nails in her skin and using his hands to squeeze her throat until could no longer taste oxygen on her tongue. _Her_ special little secret that was threatening to swallow her whole as he pressed himself like a second skin against her and drowned her in eyes a colour not possible for human comprehension. _Her_ special little secret obsession that was rolling her over his tongue, and chewing, and eating, and – 

It was a painful climax.

And she was sobbing into her pillow; her own teeth marks imprinted into her lip, and the slightest tinge of blood coating her tongue, and her fingers trembling against her thigh. He just sat there, his thumb resting on the crest of her throat.

_You’re such a good girl, Ginevra._

**Author's Note:**

> This definitely got a little weird, apologies for that.


End file.
